In the Beginning
by Jirel
Summary: Night Walkers. Because I always wondered how everything started. This must be considered an Alternate Universe for Night Walkers as I have no idea if any of this is what the author would have agreed with.
1. Chapter 1

Night Walker characters are wholly owned by Gokurakuin Sakurako, I loved the basic idea of the story and the characters but not the way things played out. So these stories are in an Alternate Universe. These are short story vinettes that set up the universe as I see it and lead into the actual story. It's always bothered me that we don't see how things came to be in Night Walkers but just walk into it after people have already been altered, so this is my viewpoint of how things started.

2021, Feb.

Jiro slid the window open, the sides moving silently in the night. Well they should – he had oiled them just 3 days ago. The window he slipped through lay in a gleaming pool of shadow, courtesy of a broken exterior light. It had taken him 3 throws to finally hit that damned light bulb. Old man Tanaka snored silently in his private ground floor room. Jiro knew the old geezer would sleep through his movement to the bed, he had checked several times in the past while working nights by walking around the room and even knocking on the window pane. The old man had never stirred or even changed his breathing. Gouro entered through the window behind him.

The two moved to stand on different sides of Tanaka's bed as smoothly as though rehearsed. Well, it might not have been rehearsed but they had done it often enough not to need to even watch the other's moves anymore. Jiro slipped the gag in the old man's mouth as Gouro began to tie his hands. Tanaka began waking up but at his age, by the time he had finished Jiro was almost done tying his feet. Even as the grunting noises that were all the old man could make when trying to scream began to come from behind the gag, the two were at the window and within seconds, out of the building. The old man was easy to handle, too weak to be a problem for two strong, healthy young men. They carried him to the waiting van, careful to stay in the shadows even though there was no one about at this late hour.

He had handed in his resignation at the nursing home the day before, it was time to move on, find another old man or woman in good health but with few or no relatives to miss them. Then start giving them their pre-feedback drugs until they were 'moved' to the science center. He had no idea what "feedback" was, where the science center was or what happened to the useless old coots after they landed in the van and he couldn't care less. He was slowly amassing enough money that even if this experiment ended soon, he's have enough to move far away from any fallout that happened.

Umm, this is my first story every, I couldn't find a category for the manga "Night Walkers" by Gokurakuin Sakurako. Any comments will be welcomed.


	2. Chapter 2 Problems

2021 two weeks later.

Morigaoka sighed heavily and ran the tape again. It had looked so promising at first. The grey hair had turned almost black and the skin had seemed to become more elastic. Even the old man's complaints about his "imprisonment" had become more passionate. But then... He checked the aged body and then the special chromosome testing. It was the same as the others. After only a few hours of becoming younger, the cells quit dividing and stopped functioning. They just wore out and wore down. Even those whose DNA protein complexes indicated they had years left in their life had stopped dividing. Not only was he not making advances on his testing but... As though called by his thoughts, the phone began to ring 'that' ringtone. His hand hesitated for a moment and then turned the phone on.

"Morigaoka"

The voice on the other end of the phone had the dry whispery tone of the truly aged voice, but yet vibrated with a fierceness and energy that many other younger men were unable to maintain. Somehow, it also carried overtones of anger and danger. "Well?"

"The same." He winced silently waiting for the blast but instead heard -

"You do remember what will happen if I die before you finish your research?"

Morigaoka's eyes went involuntarily to the picture on his desk, that of a young blond-haired boy proudly holding a college diploma. There were few resemblances between the two, but an old photo of his wife displayed a distinct look in her features that was mimicked by the boy. She also had the same blond hair. He closed his eyes briefly and tried not to remember what he had been told would happen to his son if he couldn't fix the problems with his formulae.

"Maybe I should have one of my men pay your son a visit, break him in a little for the future."

"NO!..no, I will make progress. It has to be something simple, just a little more work, a few more months." He hesitated, not really sure what else he wanted to say.

"Very well, I will wait a bit longer. Meanwhile I will notify Jiro to move on and find a new test subject."


	3. Chapter 3 Kitamura 1

2021, January

Thursday night - Grandmother Naomo. Kitamura sighed slightly as he walked into the nursing home. He didn't REALLY begrudge spending Thursdays with the grandparents, but he had to admit that Grandmother Naomo wasn't his favorite. Thankfully he rotated with a different one each week so his visits were only every 3 weeks. Grandmother was not the easiest person to get along with. She had caused innumerable problems at the other homes until she was in the one she considered equal to what she wanted. If her choice had been based on care and medical competence; Kitamura would have cheered her on, instead it was based on the "look" of the buildings and the status of the other "residents". He had dinner before his visit as her choice of residency was in a high class neighborhood and far from both his home and his school, necessitating a very long bus ride out.

As he walked into the main hall, the nurse behind the desk waved to him. Kitamura waved back and laughed to himself. The place was supposed to be extremely secure with a "live person" on guard at all times. Occasionally he had gotten in late and consequently also left late. And the woman behind the desk had napped right through his passing from the hall through the door out into the night. He walked briskly carrying the crossword puzzle book he had brought to replace the old one. Two hours later he was just closing the door to his grandmother's room having figuratively tucked her into bed and turned the lights out when movement in the doorway next to his made him jump. He received a brief flash of a picture of a dark room with a still figure in the bed when the man leaving the room quietly closed the door and then turned to Kitamura. He was in the night orderly uniform and the name tag on his left chest said "Jiro". He shrugged and smiled at Kitamura. "He kept hearing a drip from the bathroom, said it kept him a wake and had to be fixed immediately. Fell asleep as soon as it stopped." The man turned and walked back down the hall towards the night office. Kitamura frowned slightly as he walked on out the door, something about the man bothered him. He was about to board the bus when it came to him as he pictured the man walking down the hallway. His hands.. they were empty. How had he turned off the drip in the bathroom. But as he gave the ticket to the bus driver he shrugged. Probably it had just needed a stronger hand to tighten down the faucet.

3 weeks later

"Grandmother Naomo paused for a moment and then her eyes lit up. Kitamura found he had been holding his breath and now he let it out silently. For a moment he thought she had run out of gossip to tell him but she must have thought of something new.

"Oh! And Mr Tanaka from next door went missing two weeks ago! Everyone thinks he must have walked out the front door in the middle of the night; although why he would do that in his night clothes is something no one can figure out. The night nurse was fired because she admitted she had fallen asleep at the front desk." Her eyes glittered maliciously. "She claimed she had a second full time job but still would have woken up if anyone walked passed her but it did her no good. She was still let go."

It was another 30 mins before his time was up and he turned the lights off and left for the night. He couldn't help wondering why some one as old as Mr Tanaka would want to leave the home in the middle of the night. He'd met the man a few times when he was earlier than usual or visiting early in the day on a holiday. The man hadn't seemed senile at all when he talked to him. Still... Kitamura shrugged and looked up as the bus pulled in to the stop, it really wasn't any of his concern after all.


	4. Chapter 4 Kitamaura 2

Feb 2021

Another Thursday and another Grandparent. But this time Kitamura smiled as he walked into the room. The bus ride was only 20 mins and in the opposite direction as for Grandmother Naomo but that wasn't the only difference. This home had softer edges, the garden was the work of 20 years by the resident gardener with help from those residents that wished to spend time out doors planting, pruning or just pottering.

"What ho!" crackled the whispery voice inside. "Alert the nurses, the younger Kitamura is here!"

Kitamura grinned as he always did. "Now Grandpapa, what lies have you been telling the poor nurses over the last 3 weeks." He had long since run out of funny one-liners to answer grandpapa and now just attempted to rotate the few that seemed to be well received.

Grandpapa let out a crack of laughter. "That's right, I've been 'lying to the nurses' again. But there ain't no new ones for me to trick. They all know you. The only new person we got here is an orderly and I hope you ain't interested in him because he's male." For once his words almost struck home for Kitamura but he managed to let them pass by and give his grandfather the answer he was expecting. "Now Grandpapa, you know I have my eye on Nurse Ishii." They both grinned at each other. Nurse Ishii was at least in her 50s if not older, a plump motherly type.

For the next hour the two discussed current news events and the past weeks sports, arguing over who they each thought would win the coming weekend games. After awhile, an orderly came in and Kitamura left the room to give his grandfather privacy as he was helped into pajamas and readied for bed. Grandfather Kitamura wouldn't have needed a home if Grandmother Kitamura were still alive or someone were able to help him. But his legs no longer worked and a home was the best solution for him considering how the family was now.

Kitamura carefully put a bookmark in the book he'd been reading aloud. Once Grandpapa started snoring it was the sign that he was asleep for the night. Nothing would wake him now. The bookmark was placed about 3 pages back to mark where he thought grandpapa had drifted off. He turned the lights off and headed out. Just as he reached the bus stop he let out a word that his grandfather would have paled over. He'd left the sports magazine he'd borrowed from Ishiwa in Grandpapa's room. He paused and then with a groan turned around. He'd probably miss the next bus but he'd promised to return the magazine to Ishiwa tomorrow.

Just as he reached for the door to the room it swung open. Both he and the orderly in the doorway jumped. "Who are you?" The voice was gruff and sounded almost angry, yet the man looked familiar.

"I'm his grandson, I left a magazine behind. Why are YOU here?"

"Dripping faucet, it woke him up." And with that the man strode up the hallway. Kitamura stared after him. What the hell? No way a dripping faucet woke his grandpapa up once he got to sleep. The running joke was that he had once slept right through a fire alarm and the ensuing evacuation. Then he shrugged, oh well, if the man had planned on stealing something he was in the wrong room. The few things of value his grandpapa had taken with him were already gone, except for an old ring of no real value that Kitamura kept in his bedroom. He went into the room and turned on a side light. He didn't even have to look at his grandpapa to know he was fine (the snoring was still continuing) but he did check to make sure the old man didn't look like he had been moved. Then he picked up the magazine, turned the light out and hurried towards the bus stop.

Kitamura knew something was wrong as soon as he turned the corner towards home from the school. Usually the only car at the house was that of his aunt's. But there were two others today. He paused, the black one COULD be his Uncle Sauchou. The tattered blue pickup was definitely Uncle Naoko's. Why were all his father's brothers here? Fear of the unknown gripped his heart and the hand holding the backpack strap tightened into a fist. He ran to the front door and then stopped. Carefully putting his shoes next to the others on the mat, he headed for the kitchen, the center of the house in spirit. Aunt Chou wasn't there, but his two Uncle's were. They turned as he moved into the kitchen.

"What..?"

His Uncle Sauchou cut him off without even an apology. "Kitamura, when you saw father last week. Did he seem, um, different in any way?"

"Different? What happened? Has he had a stroke? Is he going to be okay? Why is everyone here instead of at the hospital?"

"Kitamura, it isn't a stroke. At least we don't think so. The nursing home called this morning. Father vanished from his room last night. They've called in neighborhood volunteers to search all around the nursing home and notified the police, but no one knows where he could be."


	5. Chapter 5 A Promise

April 2021

Kitamura stared at the box on the table. Tomorrow Grandpapa's bones and ashes would be interned. It just seemed so.. so.. WRONG. Grandpapa wasn't that old. He'd seemed so healthy – except for his legs. Maybe he, Kitamura was cursed. First his mother dying of cancer when he was 6, then his dad in the car accident when he was 14. Should he worry about Aunt Chou next? He shook his head violently. No! That couldn't be it, that was stupid. There was no such thing as curses. But still, it just didn't seem right. How could this happen? He couldn't say why but the sense of wrongness just kept overwhelming him. Behind him, he heard a couple of his cousins talking.

"Man, this is so boring!"

"Yeah, its not like he was living with anyone. Cousin Kitamura looks a little shook up though."

"Well, he'd been visiting, being the son of the family's first son and all."

Kitamura's attention drifted back to the box, his eyes running over the intricate design once again.

".... hiding something."

Suddenly his attention jerked back to his cousins' conversation.

"What do you mean."

"Well, everyone's said that he wondered out in the middle of the night without his wheelchair, right?"

"Umm, yeah?"

"Well he was missing for over 5 weeks, but when we looked in the coffin he looked fine, no scratches, well fed. And I mean, he COULD walk but not easily and it was painful. There's no way he could have walked so far as Tokyo. And who would pick up an old man in a pair of pjs with no money?"

"You're right, it IS weird, but its not like its anything we can figure out."

"I don't know, maybe it was aliens."

"Oh yeah, they captured his ass for experiments and then dumped back on earth, jeeze Toto."

The cousins drifted off but now Kitamura couldn't get the thought out of his head. What HAD happened to Grandpapa in those 5 weeks.? He had just assumed he had died of exposure and lack of food, but – well, they were right. Grandpapa had looked just as he had the last time Kitamura saw him. Or had he? Was his hair a bit darker? Kitamura shook his head. This was weird, he needed to stop dwelling on this. Next thing you know, HE would be thinking of aliens.

He decided that being active was better than sitting there brooding. Aunt Chou had put out plates of snacks and sandwiches and a couple were empty. He was pretty sure there was nothing to replace them with but he could put the empties in the sink. Kitamura picked up the plates and headed for the kitchen.

Oh! It was a good thing he'd come in. The faucet on the sink was running. If it wasn't turned just right the water didn't turn off all the way and it dripped. He stopped with his hand just inches from the handle. Dripping faucet.... Wait! Hadn't that been what the orderly had claimed that came out of Grandpapa's room claimed he was in there for? He'd just assumed that the orderly was trying to steal from Grandpapa but what if he'd been checking him out for... For what? What the hell would anyone want with stealing an old man whose family only paid him courtesy visits on the holidays, liked sports and had no money? It wasn't like those rumors of kids being lured into performing sex acts or anything. No one did that sort of thing with an old man. He shrugged, put the plates in the sink and turned off the water.

NWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNW

Just two days later and it was time to visit Grandmother Naomo again.

"Oh, Kitamura! Thank you for coming today. I heard about your Grandfather, I'm so sorry. Why you know, it reminded me of Mr Tanaka vanishing like that. But Mr Tanaka was found just a few blocks away after a couple of weeks so its not the same at all... That reminds me, you would not belive what I saw Mrs Kana doing yesterday and right at lunch too! She..."

Kitamura automatically nodded in all the right spots but he was too shocked to listen to her. That's right! Mr Tanaka had vanished too! And there had been that orderly coming out of his room saying a dripping faucet had kept him awake!

"Excuse me Grandmother Naomo, please excuse me. I'll be right back" He ran out of the room not even giving a proper bow before leaving, even though he knew that would make her mad. He started to go towards the reception desk and then stopped. No, she was the one that had been hired after Tanaka had been taken. He slowly started walking down the hall. His luck was good and it wasn't long before he found an Orderly wheeling a chair from one of the public rooms toward a private one.

"Umm, excuse me, when you have a minute could I talk to you?" It was someone he knew he had seen quite often from the corner of his eye as he talked to Grandmother Naomo.

The female orderly smiled at him. "Is it Mrs Naomo? Does she need something? I can come as soon as I get Mr Ikeda settled."

"Oh, um, no. Its nothing like that. I just wanted to ask a couple questions about another orderly."

The orderly gave him a questioning look. "Well, okay. But you know we won't give out any personal information. Still, if you want to wait here, I'll be back in a few minutes."

Kitamura waited in the corridor. Finally after almost 10 minutes the orderly came walking towards him. "Now, what did you want to know?"

"A couple of months ago, there was a male orderly working here at nights. His name was something like Jouji, Goro, Joji.. I can't remember.."

"You mean Jiro?"

"Jiro! That's right. He's not still working here is he?"

"No, he left in February."

"I knew it!" Kitamura was so excited he couldn't stop his words. "I saw him at my Grandpapa's nursing home right before Grandpapa disapeared! I think its all connected. I mean Grandpapa disapeared the same way Mr Tanaka did and"

"Stop that!" The nurse's voice wasn't that loud be she gripped his arm and shook him. "Have you been listening to some fool conspiracy theorist or something? It's a sad thing to say but people DO get out of nursing homes. Its why we have nurses stationed at the front desks and locks on the other exits. It has nothing to do with any of the orderlies in the home."

"But, but – you don't understand! He said the same thing to me when he came out of Grandpapa's room as he did here. And he didn't have any tools and..."

The nurse shook him again. "Just stop that babbling or I'll have to ask you to leave. Next thing you know you'll be saying Aliens abducted him. Just stop it. Now I have work to do." And with that she walked off down the hall.

NWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNWNW

One week later

Kitamura sat down at his computer and cracked his fingers as he gazed at the keyboard and screen. So everyone thought he was just talking crazy? Time to prove that he wasn't just aiming for a IT progream at T-U because he thought playing with computers was fun. Lets see what the internet had to say about missing people in Nursing Homes. He'd find out who took his Grandpapa away and then killed him. And when he did, he'd see to it that they were brought to justice, one way or another.

This is the end of the "In the beginning" shorts. Next will be the story of the first person to survive the experiments!


End file.
